posted April 04, 2000 05:26 PM            

Watching the Mr. Olympia contest on the television a few months ago really got me thinking. �How does a human being become over 300 pounds of solid muscle�? Never before has the world seen such creatures as the Pro Bodybuilders of today. The contestants are nearly machine like in their appearance, tilting the scales of even the imagination with their hulking sizes and gnarled muscles. But how can they do it? Diet? Weightlifting? Supplements?

The answer lies in the shadows of all professional sports today. Like a dark and hidden secret that everyone knows about and yet no one seams to want to talk about. Illegal, cheating, wrong, toxic, and even deadly, are all words to describe the mystery ingredient in our sporting athletes of today.

Steroids are banned in the U.S. period. Many other substances are illegal in the U.S. as well, but the reasoning is much more apparent. Why would a country prohibit the use of a drug that does not alter the state of mind, is in no way found to be addictive and only can shape a person into what they, as bodybuilders, want.


There are several true risks however with steroids that I can see to be considered by the government, but they are no more dangerous and certainly no more deadly than the pack of cigarettes we all can purchase at any local pit stop. On even the package it clearly states that smoking causes cancer, but they are not illegal. Why not? In that same exact store, we as citizens of the United States can purchase any of a wide variety of alcohols to poison our very own liver. Alcohol is in no way illegal either, if you are of age, and why not? These are both substances that only cause long-term addictions, and with abuse, even death. Steroids can cause liver damage, heart problems, hair loss, infertility, and the ever misinterpreted �roid rage�. The common aspirin causes damage to the liver, but because we have not seen any reason for a person to gain from taking a 100 of them at one time and actually doing real harm to themselves, the product has remained legal, unlike the anabolic steroids.

�If you look at professional bodybuilding, all the elite bodybuilders use gobs and gobs of anabolic steroids and they are not dropping dead. We have a slew of bodybuilders from the 1970�s and 1980�s who used anabolic steroids who seem fine. And most of them are so conscious of diet and exercise, they�re healthier than society at large.� As quoted by the assistant professor of exercise physiology, at the U. of Nebraska at Kearney, Jose Antonio.

If you could just give me some pointers.. maybe some facts and things like that to add.. its just a rough draft.

thanks for all that help !!!